§ 14. Commerce.

In § 1 of this chapter we have found the following numbers of positive and negative cases among commercial agricultural tribes: [394]

	Positive.	Negative.
a1 + t	8	3
a3 + t	26
a2 + c + t	7
a3 + t	6
a3 + c + t	1
Total	48	3

We use the term "commercial tribes" in a wide sense, as including not only those tribes among which many people subsist by trading, but those that exchange a considerable part of their produce for foreign merchandise. For instance, a tribe that grows corn for export is a commercial tribe in the sense we attach to the word.

We see that, with very few exceptions, all commercial agricultural tribes keep slaves. This proves that among agricultural tribes the development of trade greatly furthers the growth of slavery.

We have not much to say in explanation of this fact. When speaking of the slave-keeping tribes of the Pacific Coast of North America, we have already remarked that the development of trade tends to further slavery in various ways. Commercial tribes are likely to carry on a trade in slaves, and this makes the keeping of slaves very easy. Where the freemen take to commercial pursuits, they want others to perform the common drudgery for every-day subsistence. The trade itself may also require menial work: the articles of commerce have to be prepared and transported, trading vessels have to be rowed, etc. And finally, commerce often leads to a development of wealth and luxury; a man can now, by the labour of his slaves, acquire not only the necessaries, but the refinements of life. [Cunningham (English Industry, I p. 77) justly remarks: "While there is no opportunity for exchange, it is not so well worth while for anyone to preserve a surplus; a very abundant harvest is more likely to be prodigally used within the year, and so with all other supplies; but the existence of opportunities for trade makes it well worth while to gather a store that far exceeds any prospective need and to stow in warehouses for sale all that need not be used by the producers to satisfy their immediate wants; the conditions are present which stil further favour the accumulation of wealth."]

The last point is an important one. In self-dependent agricultural countries the main use of slave labour consists in [395] providing the master with food. If, then, a man keeps a large number of slaves who work for him, he is able to entertain his friends, or to keep a retinue of unproductive slaves or servants, whose wants are provided for by the work of the soil-tilling slaves. But where this is the sole profit one can derive from one's slaves, an owner who keeps a considerable number of them does not want to make them work very hard; he often contents himself with receiving a tribute, and so the slaves become serfs. In this way the slave-owner gets less out of his slaves than would otherwise be the case; but he does not want more, and he need not now continually supervise their work. Slavery is not likely to exist on a large scale. Where commercial relations with foreign parts are maintained, it is otherwise. A slave-owner who receives large quantities of agricultural produce from his slaves can now exchange them for foreign merchandise. Retaining for himself as much food as he wants, he exchanges the rest for such objects as are either useful and agreeable in themselves, or give him distinction among his countrymen. The use of slave labour becomes thus practically unlimited. Kohler rightly remarks that only where the economic instinct is awake, can slavery attain to a full development, and Schmoller observes that, when the patriarchal family began to produce for the market, covetousness and pursuit of gain arose and the treatment of slaves became worse. [Kohler, Das Recht der Papuas, p. 364; Schmoller, Grundriss, I p. 243.]

We must further take into consideration that slavery on a very large scale is only possible, where industrial crops are raised. "Tobacco and cotton" says Cairnes, "fulfil that condition which we saw was essential to the economical employment of slaves -- the possibility of working large numbers within a limited space; while wheat and Indian corn, in the cultivation of which the labourers are dispersed over a wide surface, fail in this respect". [Cairnes, p. 50. In ancient Rome, at the end of the Republic, plantations of olives and vines were worked with slaves, whereas cereal crops were raised on lands leased to coloni; see Weber, Article "Agrarverhaltnisse im Altertum", in Handwürterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 3rd edition, vol. I p. 166.] And cotton and similar crops are only cultivated in large quantity where they are exported. [396]

Of such "wholesale slavery", as Bagehot terms it, we find a few instances among savage tribes.

Köler tells us that in Bonny the great majority of the inhabitants are slaves. The keeping of slaves is very expensive, as agriculture and industry scarcely exist; all food has to be imported. The freemen are traders in palm-oil, and want large numbers of slaves to row the canoes in which this oil is transported. [Köler, pp. 84, 154.]

Among the Ewe of the Slave Coast slavery is practised on a very large scale. Some men keep 200-300 slaves, who form their capital. The slaves are generally employed in carrying oil from the inland to the coast for sale to Europeans. The maintaining of order among such great numbers of slaves requires great severity. Slavery marks all their institutions. It is a common saying with them that "the large water-tub does not go to the spring", whereby they mean that freemen must not do such work as is only fit for slaves and boys. [Zündel, pp. 408, 409, 387.]

Miss Kingsley, speaking of the social classes among the tribes, inhabiting the territory of the Oil Rivers on the Western Coast of Africa, says: "The third and fourth classes are true slave classes, the higher one in rank being what is called the Winnaboes or Trade boys, the lower the pull-away boys and the plantation hands. The best point in it, as a system, is that it gives to the poorest boy who paddles an oil canoe a chance of becoming a king". [Kingsley, West African studies, p. 427; see also De Cardi's description of the slave system of Bonny, ibid., pp. 516 sqq.]

Among the Garos, where cotton is the principal culture, two-fifths of the population are slaves. "The distinction [between freemen and slaves] is jealously preserved . . . . It is from the possession of a large number of them [slaves] that a man obtains influence amongst his tribe". [Dalton, p. 58.]

It is clear that among these tribes slavery would not prevail to such a great extent, if the preparing and transporting of the articles of export did not require so much labour. In these cases trade is the cause of "wholesale slavery", not necessarily of slavery in general. "Retail slavery" may have [397] existed among these tribes before they became so largely commercial. But, seeing that among them the extension of commercial relations has so greatly increased the use of slave labour, we may safely suppose that in several cases the development of trade has given rise to slavery among tribes which did not practise it before. This is also made probable by the list given at the beginning of this paragraph.

We shall not proceed to a closer investigation of this subject. We have already remarked that as yet we know very little about the general effects of trade and the place it occupies in social life among savages. And we must know more of this, before we can arrive at any accurate conclusion with regard to the influence of trade on the rise and growth of slavery.

When speaking of hunters and fishers, we have found that the influence of trade is more considerable where manufactured goods, than where raw products are exported. This will probably also apply to agricultural tribes, viz. if we take the term "manufactured goods" in a wide sense, as including agricultural produce. Raw products in our sense means articles which can be exported without any labour being previously applied to them, e. g. the various kinds of stone and earth exchanged by Eskimos and Australians. The articles exported by commercial agricultural tribes are nearly always manufactured goods in this wider sense.

It might be interesting to divide the commercial tribes (in the wider sense) into three categories, according as they export agricultural produce, manufactured goods in the common, restricted sense, or articles purchased abroad (articles of transit trade), the last category comprising the commercial tribes in the restricted sense, and inquire what are the social effects of commerce in each case. But such a subject wants separate treatment; we cannot deal with it here. We will only express our opinion, that the significance of trade and industry among savages is commonly underrated. Whether we are right here will appear when these points have been more closely studied than they are now.

In another paragraph we shall have to speak of a peculiar branch of trade, the trade in slaves.